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Feature
A Cup of Tea
by Katherine Mansfield
Rosemary Fell was not exactly beautiful. No, you couldn’t have called her beautiful. Pretty? Well, if you took her to pieces.... But why be so cruel as to take anyone to pieces? She was young, brilliant, extremely modern, exquisitely well dressed, amazingly well read in the newest of the new books, and her parties were the most delicious mixture of the really important people and ... artists—quaint creatures, discoveries of hers, some of them too terrifying for words, but others quite presentable and amusing.
Rosemary had been married two years. She had a duck of a boy. No, not Peter—Michael. And her husband absolutely adored her. They were rich, really rich, not just comfortably well off, which is odious and stuffy and sounds like one’s grandparents. But if Rosemary wanted to shop she would go to Paris as you and I would go to Bond Street. If she wanted to buy flowers, the car pulled up at that perfect shop in Regent Street, and Rosemary inside the shop just gazed in her dazzled, rather exotic way, and said: “I want those and those and those. Give me four bunches of those. And that jar of roses. Yes, I’ll have all the roses in the jar. No, no lilac. I hate lilac. It’s got no shape.” The attendant bowed and put the lilac out of sight, as though this was only too true; lilac was dreadfully shapeless. “Give me those stumpy little tulips. Those red and white ones.” And she was followed to the car by a thin shopgirl staggering under an immense white paper armful that looked like a baby in long clothes....
"A Cup of Tea" by Katherine Mansfield
Question
Use the passage to answer the question.
Based on this description, how does Rosemary’s social position affect her attitude?
(1 point)
Responses
She feels obligated to give back to others who are less fortunate.
She feels obligated to give back to others who are less fortunate.
She feels pressure to live up to the expectations of others.
She feels pressure to live up to the expectations of others.
She needs to be careful with how much she spends.
She needs to be careful with how much she spends.
She is able to do what she wants without worrying about the cost.
She is able to do what she wants without worrying about the cost.
1 answer
Based on the description of Rosemary's social position in the passage, the best answer to the question is:
She is able to do what she wants without worrying about the cost.
This is evident from the way the passage describes her shopping habits, her lavish lifestyle, and her ability to purchase expensive flowers at her leisure without concern for the price, which indicates a sense of freedom and comfort that comes from her wealth.
